Working as a beauty editor means I spend a large chunk of my life testing products that have either already gone viral or are about to. And don’t get me wrong – some of them absolutely deserve the hype.
But then there’s another category of beauty product entirely: the ones that sit in your make-up bag for years without garnering a lot of attention. The formulas you repurchase without thinking about it. The products that never quite had their TikTok moment, or maybe did once – years ago – before being overshadowed by the next big thing.
As someone who is constantly trying new launches, I think those are the products that say the most. Because if something manages to survive the constant rotation of PR packages, trend cycles and ‘must-have’ launches landing on my desk every week, it’s probably doing something very right.
And while this list includes a couple of newer discoveries, it’s mostly made up of products I genuinely think deserve more attention than they get. Some are brilliantly reliable basics, while others outperform products twice their price, and a few I almost don’t want to tell people about because they’ve become such staples in my routine. From the eyeliner I always come back to, to the face tan that makes me look instantly glowier – these are the underrated beauty products that have earned a permanent spot in my make-up bag…